“Be still, and know that I am God.” — Psalm 46:10The morning after returning from the woods, the city seemed louder than ever. The subway’s groan, the blaring horns, the reckless scooters careening down the sidewalk, the polyglot chatter of strangers—all of it crashed in at once, like a tide against the mind. After the silence of the forest, the noise felt invasive—almost painful. Yet soon enough, one remembers the rhythm again: coffee, train, work, conversation, distraction. The machinery of modern life resumes its ceaseless motion.
And yet, as much as I love the woods, I cannot leave the city. My life, my work, my duties bind me here. Its energy, its pace, its sheer immediacy still stir something in me—though it comes at a cost. The stillness of the forest lingers only faintly here, often drowned beneath the clamor.
Even so, something within resists. The quiet I found among the turning leaves still rustles beneath the surface, faint but insistent, like a prayer remembered between errands. Once, city life carried a kind of rhythm—hurried, yes, but not yet hostile. It felt alive, not frantic. Now, amid the incessant din, the lurid temptations, the steady decline of living standards, and the increasingly frequent altercations, I find myself asking what it all amounts to.
The saints worked, prayed, and walked among the same noise we endure, yet they carried the silence of contemplation within them. Perhaps that is the task now: to let the stillness of retreat shape the noise of return, to find a chapel not only in the forest but in the crowd. The meaning of life is not hidden in some distant refuge; it waits, quietly, in the midst of our daily grind, asking only to be noticed.
And so, until the day comes when I can retire to the woods, even here among the ruins, the task remains the same—to order life toward the Cross, and to carry its silence within the noise.
~ By Giovanni di Napoli, November 8th, Feast of the Four Holy Crowned Martyrs
